Month: April 2023

M, 29, been dreaming to break into a tech career for over a decade. Got an interview in February for a job that paid $16.50/hr at full-time, less than my previous 17.75/hr job but I took it because I went from a soul-sucking insurance sales job to having a chance to break into IT with a swath of eclectic knowledge and experience in a variety of areas that would prove to be generally useful (enough to get multiple certifications, which was my plan after I saved some money to take the exams.) First month was a trial by fire, I was assigned to a single client day in and day out for over a month, had the ropes shown to me, bossman is polite and basically tasked me with writing up simple SOPs(Standard Operating Procedures) while doing the day to day things that come up, like resetting user account passwords,…

Owner of the company responded within the hour and said “we’ll be sure to give pappapill kudos!” That was 2 weeks ago. Time to enact “minimum wage = minimum effort” yet?

Recently I planned a week vacation for a charity gaming event that a local Children's Miracle network hospital sent me to (flight and hotel all paid). I had got approval from my boss who encouraged me to take the trip and said he had fully supported what I was doing for charity and commending me for it. I told my boss, every day the week prior time off that I would be out of town the following week. I took my time off, had a lovely time, won a bunch of money for my local CMN hospital. I got back and immediately the day after my boss calls me stating they were not ready for me to be off a week and that they needed to slow down on what they were doing. That caught me off guard because anyone on my team could have done exactly what I was…

Long story incoming, would appreciate advice but the core question is contained within the post title I’ve worked for a company for the past 1+ years and enjoyed it for the most part. I’m even embarrassed to say that I drank some corporate koolaid and thought this company might be different. Shame on me. The company has recently started struggling worse than any time in its history because of the economy. Their financials would clearly benefit from laying off certain of their workforce (including my department) but here is the catch: it is a point of pride and branding for this company that they have never had to do a layoff, and they clearly want to hold onto that status. So they’re getting creative with how they thin the herd. I had told my manager a little while back that I wasn’t enjoying working in Profession X anymore and wanted…

I’ve been a temp at a huge plant for almost a year. There are approximately 25 temps. Production has been slow so they stopped production on one day out of the week. All the supervisors stuck their neck out for their crews, complaining about how their guys aren’t getting a 40hr week. Plant managers and supervisors came to an agreement that that day would be an optional/courtesy “maintenance” day. This day is dedicated to cleaning, painting, and spiffing up the place. Now I’m hearing this “optional” day isn’t so optional. They ASK if you’d like to work that “optional” day then complain if you say no. For us temps it’s much worse. They threaten to not hire you on if you don’t get your 40hrs even though it’s just a courtesy. How does this make sense? Give someone an option then be mad at the option they chose AND give…